- France: Melenchon says he will run for president in 2027
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leading politician in France’s left-wing Unbowed party, says he will run in next year’s presidential election, setting up a potential showdown with centrist and right-wing rivals. ‘Yes, I am a candidate,’ the 74-year-old told TF1 TV on Sunday. It is Melenchon’s fourth presidential bid; he also ran in 2012, 2017 and 2022, when he came third behind far-right leader Marine Le Pen and French President Emmanuel Macron, who made it to the second round of voting. Melenchon has been growing his share of the vote with each campaign.” (05/04/26)
- Spokesperson: Giuliani hospitalized “in critical but stable condition”
Source: CBC News [Canadian state media]
“Rudolph Giuliani, the ex-mayor of New York City and a former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, is in critical but stable condition at a hospital, his spokesperson said Sunday. Ted Goodman didn’t say what sent the 81-year-old to hospital or how long he’s been there. … Giuliani was hospitalized in September after suffering a fractured vertebra and other injuries in a car crash in New Hampshire.” (05/03/26)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/rudy-giuliani-hospitalized-9.7186315
- North Korea: Regime denies role in crypto hacking cases
Source: United Press International
“North Korea denied allegations that it was behind recent international cryptocurrency hacking and cybercrime cases, calling the claims ‘false information’ and warning that it would not tolerate them. A spokesperson for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry issued the statement Sunday in response to a question from the Korean Central News Agency. The ministry called the allegations ‘absurd slander’ aimed at damaging North Korea’s image for political purposes. … The international community has repeatedly identified North Korea-linked hacking groups as suspects in major cyberattacks and cryptocurrency thefts. The Lazarus Group, believed to be linked to North Korea, has been cited as a possible actor behind an April 18 hack of decentralized finance platform KelpDAO that reportedly involved about $290 million in cryptocurrency.” (05/03/26)
- Russia: Drone hits upscale Moscow tower as city readies for Victory Day parade
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“A drone hit a residential tower in an upscale Moscow district in a rare strike near the city centre ahead of the traditional World War II Victory Day parade. Moscow air defences repelled an attack by two Ukrainian drones, and one hit the building on Mosfilmovskaya Street, according to a post on Monday by Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. Emergency services were sent to the scene, and there were no reports of casualties. Mosfilmovskaya is about 6-8km (about 4-5 miles) from the Kremlin, and local media showed damage to the upper floors of a high-end residential building.” (05/04/26)
- Japan: Protests in support of pacifist constitution as Takaichi pushes revisions
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has called for ‘advanced discussions’ on revising the pacifist constitution, as large demonstrations were held nationwide to oppose any changes to the country’s supreme law. … Revisionists have set their sights on article 9 – the co-called ‘pacifist’ clause – which forbids Japan from threatening or using military force to settle international disputes. … On Sunday – constitutional memorial day – an estimated 50,000 people gathered at a park in Tokyo in support of the document, whose wording has remained unchanged since it went into effect on 3 May 1947. … Demonstrations were held in dozens of other towns and cities on Sunday – a public holiday – attended by people old enough to recall how the postwar constitution had brought peace and stability to a country ravaged by conflict.” (05/04/26)
- Trump: US Navy will “guide” ships out of Strait of Hormuz from Monday
Source: Axios
“President Trump said the U.S. Navy will start guiding ships from foreign countries through the Strait of Hormuz from Monday and warned that if Iran tries to disrupt the process, the American military will use force. … It was not immediately clear whether this move was coordinated with Iran in any way. … The U.S. sent on Sunday another amended draft for an agreement to end the war in response to Iranian officials’ latest proposal, sources said.” (05/03/26)
- Three cruise ship passengers die in suspected hantavirus outbreak
Source: Reuters
“Three people have died and three are ill after a Netherlands-based cruise ship was hit by a suspected outbreak of hantavirus, a rodent-borne virus that can cause fatal respiratory illness, authorities and media reports said on Sunday. Netherlands-based Oceanwide Expeditions said in a news release it was ‘managing a serious medical situation’ on a polar expedition ship, the MV Hondius, which was off Cape Verde, an island nation in the Atlantic west of Africa. The cruise departed from Argentina about three weeks ago with around 150 passengers and stopped in the Antarctic and other locations on its way to Cape Verde, according to media reports. A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesperson confirmed that two Dutch passengers had died, but gave no further details.” (05/03/26)
- Trump: US will reduce number of troops in Germany “a lot further” than withdrawal of 5,000
Source: SFGate
“President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the U.S. will significantly reduce its troop presence in Germany, escalating a dispute with Chancellor Friedrich Merz as he seeks to scale back America’s commitment to European security. The Pentagon on Friday had initially announced it would pull some 5,000 troops out of Germany, but when asked Saturday about the reason for the move, Trump didn’t offer an explanation and said an even bigger reduction was coming. ‘We’re going to cut way down. And we’re cutting a lot further than 5,000,’ Trump told reporters in Florida. Earlier on Saturday, Germany’s defense minister appeared to take in stride the news that 5,000 U.S. troops would be leaving his country.” [editor’s note: Yet another thing we libertarians have been agitating for for decades? Or just another ploy? – SAT] (05/02/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/germany-focuses-on-shared-interests-after-us-22237978.php
- A Few Words on May Day from a Radical Welfare Queen
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid“Mainstream shitlib hagiographers will tell you that FDR delivered us from the Fritz Langian sweatshops of the Gilded Ages on a silver platter. Don’t fucking believe it. The eight-hour workday and the five-day workweek are the bruised fruit of wildcatting anarchists and communists with guns, and the New Deal declawed them by federalizing the whole goddamn operation and turning thriving workplace democracies into corporate boards with labyrinthine bureaucracies and CEOs pulling down six figures without ever having to break a sweat.” (05/03/26)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/05/a-few-words-on-may-day-from-radical.html
- The Era of Rational Discourse Is Over
Source: The Atlantic
by Adam Kirsch“Americans have a long history of being hurried into war on false pretexts. The ‘yellow press’ encouraged a war fever in 1898 by blaming the sinking of the USS Maine on the Spanish, even though the Navy’s own expert said it was caused by an accidental explosion. The George W. Bush administration justified the invasion of Iraq by claiming that Saddam Hussein had connections to the 9/11 attacks and was building weapons of mass destruction, neither of which turned out to be true. But with the Iran war, as in so many other ways, Donald Trump has broken new ground. He is the first president to start a war without even bothering to lie to the public, because he simply didn’t care what the public thought.” (05/03/26)
- How Covid Transformed Me into a Gardener and Business Owner
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Renaud Beauchard“When things turned dystopian in March 2020, I was in the middle of a big life change which ultimately led me to create a business coaching families to grow their own chemical-free food. After a decade of international development consulting scouring the African continent to make Africans’ lives more connected to the global economy, and incidentally also more precarious, I had already been slowly seeking an escape route from the abstract world inhabited by the professional managerial class. Covid didn’t create my rupture with this world. It confirmed it.” (05/03/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/how-covid-transformed-me-into-a-gardener-and-business-owner/
- Trump finds a “Southern Strategy” to save his dreams of dictatorship
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
by Will Bunch“From friendly grand juries to Jim Crow voting maps, the former Confederacy looks to save Trump’s autocratic ambitions.” (05/03/26)
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/trump-comey-prosecution-southern-grand-juries-20260503.html
- The NATO Secretary General is Failing NATO
Source: The Realist Review
by Ted Snider“U.S. President Donald Trump has been very publicly aggressive in expressing his anger at NATO. He told NATO members they will ‘have to start learning how to fight for yourself’ because ‘the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.’ … On April 8, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte held a two-hour ‘frank and open’ discussion with Trump to try to heal the rift. Rutte may have failed to soothe the angry Trump, who, following the meeting, posted ‘NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN.’ But Rutte may have failed in more than that mission as Secretary General of NATO. He may have failed in that role to represent NATO members and NATO values.” (05/03/26)
https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/the-nato-secretary-general-is-failing
- The Murder of Spirit Airlines
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“On May 2, Spirit Airlines ceased operations after it failed to get the US government to bail it out of the latest in a series of untenable situations — at least two of which the US government put it in to begin with. … Maybe Spirit would have failed even absent the massive jet fuel price increases. Perhaps the proposed merger with JetBlue would have dragged that airline down, too, instead of profitably folding Spirit’s assets into a more efficient operating environment. And maybe all of Ted Bundy’s victims were mere moments away from choosing suicide when he strangled them to death instead. We’ll never know, will we? What we do know is that the US government’s murder of Spirit Airlines will almost certainly result in (checks notes) ‘higher fares, fewer seats, and harm [to] millions of consumers.'” (05/02/26)
- Trump’s IRS lawsuit is best shakedown in presidential history
Source: USA Today
by James Bovard“President Donald Trump is suing the Internal Revenue Service to force the American people to pay him at least $10 billion in damages because he was embarrassed when his tax returns leaked out in 2020. Trump ordered his appointees at federal agencies to speedily give him the billions to settle his lawsuit. But on April 24, federal Judge Kathleen Williams temporarily stopped the greatest shakedown in presidential history. … Trump’s lawsuit pretends he was an innocent bystander. Who was president at the time of that leak? Trump. Who appointed the chief of the IRS? Trump. And who deserves $10 billion because of alleged federal misconduct under his watch? Trump.” (05/01/26)
- Standing Athwart Hegel, Yelling “Stop!”
Source: The Dispatch
by Jonah Goldberg“On Wednesday, The Atlantic’s Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, two serious journalists formerly with the Washington Post, begin their piece with a question: ‘Had President Trump, we wondered, possibly been reading or at least thumbing through – just maybe — the works of … Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel?’ That’s it. That’s the lede. … Is Trump a world-historical figure in the Hegelian sense? Are you high? Of course not. Parker and Scherer are more interested in whether Trump thinks he’s a world-historical figure in the way that Hegel described. The answer to that is also a resounding no. The dude doesn’t read memos. You think he’s thumbing through Hegel? In fairness to them, the real point of their piece is to illuminate that Trump’s delusions of grandeur are worrisomely out of control. And they succeed.” (05/01/26)
- Trump’s Iran blockade snatches defeat from the jaws of victory
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Trita Parsi“[T]he fragile ceasefire disproportionately favored the United States over Iran: Trump secured his central objective — a swift exit from a costly war — while Iran forfeited its primary source of leverage, namely the inflationary pressure of elevated oil prices. Tehran, by contrast, remained unable to achieve its core objective — meaningful sanctions relief — without entering a difficult diplomatic process with Washington. The asymmetry was stark: Trump could afford strategic patience, whereas Iran risked squandering the most consequential gains the conflict could have yielded if negotiations faltered or collapsed. In short, this emerging status quo could have constituted a quiet but decisive victory for Trump. … But then Trump committed a familiar and consequential error.” (05/02/26)
- The Trump Surveillance State
Source: Antiwar.com
by Andrew P Napolitano“The Fourth Amendment protects all persons from warrantless government searches and seizures of their persons, houses, papers and effects. It requires that warrants be supported by probable cause of crime and specifically describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. Last week, for the first time in the modern era, the government argued to the Supreme Court of the United States that the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution did not outlaw general warrants.” (05/01/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2026/04/30/the-trump-surveillance-state
- Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 05/03/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Trump Says US Will ‘Guide’ Ships Out of Hormuz Strait, US Acting ‘Like Pirates,’ and More.” (05/03/26)
- Neon Liberalism, episode 72
Source: Liberal Currents
“Samantha is joined by Matt Darling to discuss the state of the economy.” (05/03/26)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/measuring-the-vibecession-neon-liberalism-72-with-matt-darling/
- Pink Flame of Liberty, 05/03/26
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“Candace Owens gets SUED AGAIN.” (05/03/26)
- How to Fix It with John Avlon, 05/03/26
Source: The Bulwark
“Tech Broke Democracy With Social Media. AI Is Next. (w /Josh Tyrangiel).” (05/03/26)
- Larry Johnson on The Scott Horton Show
Source: The Scott Horton Show
“Larry Johnson on Trump’s Tenuous Ceasefire with Iran.” (05/03/26)
- Unattended Baggage, episode 339
Source: Unattended Baggage
“Alex wants his underwear back.” (05/01/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-339-alex-wants-his-underwear